MRI METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR RAPID ASSESSMENT OF STENOSIS SEVERITY

摘要

A method and apparatus is disclosed to rapidly assess the severity of a stenosis (108) using MR technology. The invention includes identifying (124) a suspected stenotic vessel (100) and applying (126) a phase contrast pulse sequence (160) to the stenotic vessel (100) in which the MR operator is allowed to control the amplitude and direction of the flow encoding gradient (132). The amplitude of the flow encoding gradient is increased (132, 138) until the observance of flow related aliasing (136). Once flow related aliasing is observed (140), the velocity encoding (VENC) value is recorded (142) and used as the indicator of peak flow velocity in the suspected stenotic vessel (100).